Page:Experimental researches in chemistry and.djvu/440

1857.] as they sink together will lie for months at the bottom of the fluid without uniting or coming nearer to each other, or without being taken up by metallic mercury put into the same vessel. This is consistent with what we know of the manner in which gold and platinum can be thoroughly wetted if cleaned in water, and of the difference which occurs when they are dried and become invested with air. I endeavoured to transfer the gold particles unchanged into other media, for the purpose of noting any alteration in the action on light. By decanting the water very closely, and then carefully adding alcohol with agitation, I could diffuse them through that iluid; they still possessed a blue colour when looked through in the dark tube, but seemed much condensed or aggregated, for the fluid was obscure, not clear, and the particles soon subsided. I could not transfer them from alcohol to camphine; they refused association with the latter fluid, retaining a film of alcohol or water, and adhering by it to the glass of the vessel; but when the camphine was removed, a partial diffusion of them in fresh alcohol could be effected, and gave the colour as before. All these transfers, however, injured the particles as to their condition of division. In one case I obtained a ruby film on a white plate; on pouring off the water and allowing parts to become dry, these became violet, seen by the light going through them to the plate and back again to the eye. I could not wet these places with water; a thin feebly reflecting surface remained between it and them. Using alcohol, the parts already dry remained violet, when wetted by it; but wetting other parts with alcohol before they were dry from water, they remained rosy, became bluish when dry from the alcohol, and became rosy again when rewetted by it.

It will be necessary to speak briefly of the reduction of gold into a divided state by some other chemical agents than those already described. If a drop of solution of protosulphate of iron be introduced to, and instantly agitated with, a weak neutral solution of chloride of gold in such proportion that the latter shall be in excess, the fluid becomes of a blue-grey colour by transmission and brown by reflexion; and a deposit is formed of a green colour by transmitted light, greatly resembling